d with her to change her mind.

"Drink the cup to the dregs," he said. "This is our grief, our trial.
None feel and know what we feel and know, and your youth is called to
bear a burden heavy to be borne. You must stand beside his grave as
surely as I must commit him to it."

Men will go far to look upon the coffin of one whose end happens to be
mysterious or terrible. The death of Sir Walter's son-in-law had
made much matter for the newspapers, and not only Chadlands, but the
countryside converged upon the naval funeral, lined the route to the
grave, and crowded the little burying ground where the dead man would
lie. Cameras pointed their eyes at the gun-carriage and the mourners
behind it. The photographers worked for a sort of illustrated paper
that tramples with a swine's hoofs and routs up with a swine's nose the
matter its clients best love to purchase. Mary, supported by her father
and her cousin, preserved a brave composure. Indeed, she was less
visibly moved than they. It seemed that the ascetic parent of the dead
had power to lift the widow to his own stern self-control. The chaplain
of Tom May's ship assisted at the service, but Septimus May conducted
it. Not a few old messmates attended, for the sailor had been popular,
and his unexpected death brought genuine grief to many men. Under a
pile of flowers the coffin was carried to the grave. Rare and precious
blossoms came from Sir Walter's friends, and H. M. S. Indomitable sent
a mighty anchor of purple violets. Mr. May read the service without a
tremor, but his eyes blazed out of his lean head, and there lacked not
other signs to indicate the depth of emotion he concealed. Then the
bluejackets who had drawn the gun-carriage fired a volley, and the
rattle of their musketry echoed sharply from the church tower.

Upon the evening of the day that followed Septimus May resumed the
subject concerning which he had already fitfully spoken. His ideas were
now in order, and he brought a formidable argument to support a strange
request. Indeed, it amounted to a demand, and for a time it seemed
doubtful whether Sir Walter would deny him. The priest, indeed, declared
that he could take no denial, and his host was thankful that other and
stronger arguments than his own were at hand to argue the other side.
For Dr. Mannering stayed at the manor house after the funeral, and the
Rev. Noel Prodgers, the vicar of Chadlands, a distant connection of
the Lennoxes, was also dinin